David Rosenmann-Taub

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David Rosenmann-Taub (b. May 3, 1927, Santiago) is a Chilean poet, musician, and artist. His precocious talent in both literature and music was recognized and encouraged by his father, a polyglot, and his mother, a virtuoso pianist. She began teaching him the instrument when he was two; by nine, he himself was giving piano lessons. He also began writing poetry at a very early age, and at fourteen his first published work, a long poem called El Adolescente (“The Adolescent”), appeared in a literary magazine.

He graduated from the University of Chile in 1948. That same year he won the Sindicato de Escritores prize for his first book of poetry, Cortejo y Epinicio (Cortege and Epinicion), which received a reputation-making review from the preeminent literary critic of Chile, Hernán Díaz Arrieta (known as “Alone”). In the three decades that followed, Rosenmann-Taub published more than ten volumes of poetry, including Los Surcos Inundados (The Flooded Furrows), La Enredadera del Júbilo (The Vine of Jubilance), Los Despojos del Sol (The Spoils of the Sun), and El Cielo en la Fuente (The Sky in the Fountain). For Los Surcos Inundados, he received the Premio Municipal de Poesía, the Chilean equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His poetry has been admired by authors as disparate as Witold Gombrowicz, Victoria Ocampo, and Francis de Miomandre.

In 1976, he began to travel, lecturing on poetry, music, and aesthetics in Latin America, Europe, and the United States, where he settled in 1985. His writings since that time are now being published in Chile, along with reissues of his older works. Armando Uribe Arce, the recent winner of Chile’s Premio Nacional, described Rosenmann-Taub as “the most important and profound living poet of the entire Spanish language.”